NEWARK, March 28th—Fired up by the global rise of racist terror, fascism, and the threat of world war unleashed by the current U.S. ruling class, a multiracial crowd of hundreds marched at our nearest “No Kings” protest—joining millions of workers from New Jersey to Kenya.
Progressive Labor Party’s (PLP) task every day is to win our students, coworkers, and longtime and new friends to a clear understanding: capitalism, with every bombing and every attack, is stripping away its liberal democratic facade and revealing its rotten fascist core.
Fascism is not an accident—and it’s not just Trump. Fascism is how rulers respond when their system is in crisis, and it doesn’t happen overnight by electing a MAGA candidate. It is a process. As capitalism plunges deeper into economic turmoil, rulers increasingly turn to open violence and will suspend democracy to maintain their grip on power. Trump represents open fascism — but the liberal Democratic Party is the greater fascist danger. They are the wolves in sheep’s clothing: hiding behind a veneer of progressive politics. Worst of all, they are effective at drumming up the kind of rainbow nationalism and use reformist crumbs to get young people marching to their deaths in World War 3.
Instead, we call on workers everywhere to reject capitalism in all its forms and fight for workers’ power: communist revolution.
Fiery reds roast liberalism
Our multiracial PLP contingent of class-conscious workers and students brought a militant communist line to the “No Kings” protest—centering the struggle against the whole system, not just Trump. That perspective landed. PLP’ers made contact with four new people who found our politics refreshing: a veteran, a worker who called themselves a communist but wasn’t with any organization, and an older neighbor. Around 80 people took our revolutionary communist CHALLENGE newspaper and leaflets, and many were openly critical of the liberal politics on display.
One worker put it plainly: even though the protest was “Lib’d up,” he recognized the importance of seizing every opportunity to meet other revolutionary workers and build a base wherever our class siblings gather in mass. Overall, the protests confirmed that workers are hungry for a real alternative to this rotting system.
Liberal politicians sell workers heartbreaking illusions—that voting for them will end wars or stop racist ICE raids. Electing Black and Brown progressive mayors like Ras Baraka, Zohran Mamdani, or governor Mikie Sherrill will never save us. They are elected to manage a system that was never built for workers in the first place. No matter who is in charge, capitalism will always prioritize profits over workers’ lives. Liberals will occasionally champion reforms—free public transportation, affordable housing, temporarily shutting down immigrant detention centers—to fool workers into thinking they’re on our side. But declining profits under capitalism will make such reforms impossible to sustain. They are a decoy, not a solution.
As the illusion of liberal democracy fades, workers must be clear: bosses worldwide—large and small—are dumping workers’ needs, discarding the rule of law, and abandoning the pretense that we ever had an equal say in their system. With that illusion gone, they must rely on racist, sexist, and nationalist terror to enforce their rule and prepare for war against rising imperialist rivals. ICE deportations in the U.S. and travel bans disciplining workers in China are two sides of the same coin (NYT, 03/08/25). This naked, unmasked approach to ruling is what we call fascism — and it is the future capitalism is building for all of us.
From the masses to the masses
While the official leadership of the protest relied on bland, reformist chants and speeches that mainly attacked Trump and tried to keep us blind towards capitalism, we energized the crowd that did not want to be pacified. We led chants like “Democrats, Republicans! We don’t want your imperialist games!”—one of several messages that clearly resonated with upwards of 150 people who took up our chants at different times.
When two hecklers linked with Democratic Party tried to silence us by yelling things like you are not chanting the same chants, you didn’t organize this, this isn’t about you, this is not the message, go organize your own march, we saw the power of our ideas as workers stepped in to defend us. A young Black man who was so inspired by our antiracist chants came up to us and asked us if he could try out a chant, and he added a new chant attacking the racism of ICE. When the confrontation with the hecklers happened he physically stood by our side and told them we were doing the right thing. He added, the point is for us to learn from each other. His support gave us that boost in confidence as we roared on the megaphone, “Have the democrats not betrayed us? Are we wrong?” To which the people around us enthusiastically agreed with us. That was enough for the hecklers to see people were not on their side and they drifted away. Others who we spoke to one on one were more open to building the power of workers to beat and ultimately get rid of capitalism, after their initial response was to vote Trump out.
After the march a small group of us including students, educators, and a healthcare worker ate pizza together, read CHALLENGE, and discussed the protest. As we ate we shared how we felt affirmed by the people driving by, and on the sidewalks, enthusiastically taking our newspaper, chanting along, and genuinely engaged and identifying with the protest. The students who are getting to know the PLP expressed our sharp understanding of the “lesser of two evils” crap, recognizing that neither Democratic nor Republican party offers a real solution to capitalism or global conflict.
Hopelessness in capitalist democracy vs blossoming communist mindset
Some workers are drawn to No Kings protests from the hope of democracy prevailing or democracy “returning” or the possibility of “saving democracy”, when there is not enough hope that capitalism can be challenged itself. As bosses betray that demand, for more workers the hope is born in seeing liberalism criticized, in realizing we don’t have to rely on the emptiness of voting for the “perfect” candidate or “hero”, and that the bosses’ hunger for profits and lawless dependence on global war trapping us in bloodshed is being challenged by working class fighters every day.
In turn, the base for communist ideas inside the working class grows by learning from this leadership and the initiative of the masses willing to do nothing less than overpower the ruling class to defend each other like in Minneapolis. And asserting the need to organize that power into an army of millions of communist fighters capable of defeating the whole rotten profit system.
